Last summer, The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR ) Philippines was looking for a digital agency that can help them develop their official website (www.unhcr.ph). We sat down with them so we can determine what they need vs what they want. After weeks of evaluating different design agencies, we were fortunate enough to WIN the project.

Having dreams of working for United Nations when we were still young, this is the closest we can get. In our little way, we would be able to help UNHCR Philippines become more visible in the digital world. We rolled up our sleeves and stocked up on coffee (yes, caffeine runs on our veins) in preparation for the work ahead.

The main challenge was to design a website that won’t veer off from the brand identity of UNHCR Global. The Philippine office handed out their Identity Guideline document, website mock ups to guide us in creating the whole look and feel.

Going Responsive

To make the website accessible to more people, we decided to make the website responsive. This means that this one website will reformat its layout depending on the device (Desktop, Tablets and Mobile Phones).

How are the contents being managed?

There are many open-source Content Management Systems (CMS) available in the market at the moment. From our experience, end users always gets overwhelmed by the complicated Admin Panel of enterprise-level CMS like Joomla or Drupal. Having used WordPress for years, developing and customizing it is very easy and most of all training UNHCR’s content team on how to use it was a breeze!

Let’s Donate!

One major function of UNHCR’s website was to make a way for their supporters to donate money to help out the office’s different projects. To do this, we needed to make a way for the website to talk to a credit card processing facility (Geek talk: Payment Gateway). Thru a one time or monthly donations using their credit cards, supporters can now send help through UNHCR’s donation page (http://donate.unhcr.ph).

Challenges brought this project closer to our hearts specially with what happened in Zamboanga recently. As their tagline goes “1 family torn apart by conflict is too many”.

If you have any projects in mind, 2elev8 Media can surely help you. Just go to our contact page so we can start the ball rolling!

About UNHCR, Philippines

UNHCR has been operating in the Philippines for over 30 years. For many years, its presence was limited to Manila with a focus on asylum seekers, refugees, broader asylum-migration issues and statelessness. In May 2010, with a renewed dialogue between the government and armed groups, UNHCR established its presence in Mindanao to addresses issues on internal displacement.

UNHCR is the humanitarian organization working in 126 countries providing protection and assistance to millions of refugees, returnees, internally displaced people and stateless persons.